Selphira had rested well in the underground shelter Julius had prepared.
Ashenway recovery pills, combined with constant support from water tars specialized in regenerative techniques, had maintained her at the highest possible level of recovery during the extended break.
With such careful attention, her energy had recovered to seventy-five percent. Instead of the six hours she had initially calculated, Kharzan’s army had taken a full eight hours to resu movent. So Julius had convinced her to rest a bit longer and reach this quite acceptable energy level.
The delay had been worth it. She could feel the difference in her mana reserves, the steady pulse of power that flowed through her connection with her beasts. Her White Serpent stirred restlessly within her, eager for the coming battle, while her turtle’s defensive energy provided a calming counterbalance.
Ren and Larissa had sent several hours ago so protective skins covered with Ren’s own spores to manipulate the bombs or handle any infected in case there had been accidents during transport or handling.
Fortunately, that hadn’t been necessary. The flying teams had handled the bombs perfectly, following protocols with the precision that military training demanded.
But the protective equipnt would perhaps serve Selphira for the final phase of her mission. They gave them to her along with instructions on how to use them appropriately, though she doubted she’d need such precautions.
Julius was now ready to initiate the coordinated bombardnt they had been planning. His eyes held the focused intensity of a commander who had spent hours perfecting every detail of what was about to unfold.
The waiting was over.
♢♢♢♢
A bit earlier, in Kharzan’s main army encampnt, the leader received reports alongside Valdris in a command tent that had beco the nerve center of multiple simultaneous crises.
The leaders of the main families, Strahlfang, Blackwood, and even the recently rescued leader of the Zhao, were present. They had temporarily set aside direct command of their family forces to jointly address the precarious situation that had developed.
Each face bore the weight of command decisions that could determine not just the battle’s outco, but the survival of their bloodlines.
An infection had erged on the right side of their formation and was expanding slowly but surely through the troops. The reports were disturbing in their consistency.
"Current containnt status?" Kharzan asked, observing the changing terrain maps that showed the extent of the problem.
"We have isolated the contaminated," reported Blackwood’s leader, his weathered face showing the strain of managing an impossible situation. "But they continue releasing particles with a range of several ters. Gradually, so careless soldiers are erging as new contaminated from the proximity."
His voice carried frustration, every precaution they implented seed to create new vulnerabilities.
Kharzan knew from previous reports that abyssal soldiers could combat the infection. The information had co from the failed mission in the forest where they hadn’t been able to capture "that damned brat"... The details of that failure remained painful to consider.
But after consulting extensively with the Yino forces they had available, about 500 soldiers distributed throughout the army, Kharzan had learned of a critical complication.
If there was too much exposure to the infection without appropriate rest, the abyssal beasts could be lost forever. It wasn’t simply a matter of fatigue or temporary damage. It was permanent destruction of bonds that couldn’t be recovered.
Each abyssal tar represented resources that couldn’t be replaced.
"How many infected do we currently have?" Valdris asked, his mind already calculating the mathematics of attrition.
"Around one hundred," Blackwood responded, consulting the most recent reports. "But the number continues growing slowly."
Kharzan found himself facing a complex tactical dilemma. He had to consider how much those hundred infected soldiers mattered versus the risk of permanently losing so of the valuable abyssal tars.
The regular soldiers were his true force, one he had to try to preserve for the war’s end. But unlike Yino’s less aggressive and battle-useful abyssals... It was painful to admit, but true from a cold military perspective, the abyssal tars represented capabilities that couldn’t be duplicated if Yino didn’t provide them.
"Options?" he asked the assembled leaders.
"We can attempt total quarantine," Strahlfang suggested, his voice carefully asured. "Keep the infected isolated until the infection naturally exhausts itself."
It was the safest option.
"Estimated ti?"
"Unknown. But we could be talking about days or weeks."
The uncertainty was almost worse than a long definitive tiline. Planning beca impossible when the variables couldn’t be controlled or predicted.
"We don’t have even a bit of that ti," Kharzan growled, his frustration bleeding through his careful composure. "Not when we must reach the bridge as soon as possible."
Every hour of delay gave their enemies more ti to prepare, more opportunities to strengthen their defenses, more chances for reinforcents to arrive and tip the balance permanently against them.
Zhao cleared his throat, drawing attention. "We can also use the abyssals in short rotations. Limited exposure, mandatory rest periods."
It was a compromise solution, the kind of middle ground that satisfied no one completely but offered sothing to everyone.
"Risk of loss?"
"Reduced, but not completely eliminated."
Half-asures in war often led to half-victories. Kharzan studied the maps.
One hundred infected soldiers. Five hundred available abyssals.
The numbers danced in his mind, each calculation leading to conclusions he didn’t want to reach.
"What is your general recomndation?" he finally asked.
The leaders exchanged glances, each weighing factors that went beyond simple considerations of morality, effectiveness, and survival of the old kingdom.
It was the type of decision that would define not only the outco of this specific battle, but the character of the leaders who made it. History would judge them not just on victory or defeat, but on how they chose to pursue either.
But Kharzan didn’t have to think long about the dilemma of the infected soldiers...
♢♢♢♢
Julius had initiated the true coordinated bombardnt he had been preparing for hours.
The occasional battles that had been happening in the air were nothing compared to what now unleashed upon Kharzan’s army.
Julius now had 6000 soldiers from the wall under his command. Veterans who controlled parts of the wall more distant from the imdiate city had finally arrived and been recruited for the operation. With this expanded force, Julius could delegate control of the younger, inexperienced soldiers more easily, freeing him to coordinate more complex tactics.
The transformation in his capabilities was dramatic. Where before he had been limited to simple hit-and-run tactics, now he could bring destruction that would test every aspect of enemy defenses.
He had carefully prepared all his available flyers and sent so to disperse toward the flanks of what appeared to be a large, concentrated attack by flying beasts.
The formation was deliberately visible, obviously aggressive, designed to draw attention and provoke exactly the response he anticipated.
When Kharzan’s scouts reported the massive enemy formation approaching from the air, the commander and his group of leaders found the situation strange.
The display was almost too straightforward, lacking the subtle misdirection they had co to expect from Julius’s operations.
"Perhaps he’s desperate," Strahlfang suggested, studying the aerial formations through his spyglass. "His numbers are limited. Maybe he decided to bet everything on a frontal attack when we started marching again."
The logic was sound on the surface. Desperate commanders often resorted to desperate tactics when conventional approaches failed to produce results.
Kharzan was about to give the order to send all available flyers to "crush this clumsy attack" when Valdris raised a warning hand.
His instincts had proven good quality throughout the campaign, often catching details that Kharzan’s more aggressive nature might overlook.
"It’s too direct," Valdris murmured, studying the flight patterns. "Julius has never used such obvious tactics."
"My Lord," he continued carefully, his voice carrying the weight of experience earned through countless battles, "it could be a trap. I suggest we send only double what they’re sending, retaining so aerial soldiers as reserve."
The suggestion ran counter to Kharzan’s instincts, which demanded overwhelming force applied imdiately to crush any threat before it could develop into sothing more dangerous.
Kharzan frowned, his tactical mind warring with his aggressive nature. His instinct told him to completely crush the imdiate threat, but Valdris’s experience had been invaluable during the entire campaign.
"How many would we retain?"
"A third of our aerial forces. Enough to respond to unexpected complications."
It was a conservative approach, the kind that preserved options at the cost of potentially decisive action. In warfare, such decisions often determined whether armies survived or perished.
♢♢♢♢
Soon it beca clear that Valdris had been right when urgent reports began arriving from multiple directions.
The timing was almost perfect, each ssenger arriving just as the previous one finished delivering their alarming news. It was coordination that spoke to careful planning and precise execution.
"Enemy contact on the western flank!" shouted a ssenger running toward the command tent, his breathing labored from the urgency of his mission. "Multiple small units launching unidentified objects!"
"Eastern flank also under attack!" ca another report almost simultaneously, the ssenger’s voice cracking under the strain...
"Similar pattern! Dispersed bombardnt!" Zhao noted.
The reports were coming too fast. This wasn’t the random chaos of opportunistic strikes.
"North and south report enemy activity!" added a third ssenger, his words tumbling over each other in his haste to deliver critical information.
The aerial soldiers who hadn’t been sent to intercept the main distraction managed to respond to so of these secondary attacks. So flyers even exploded along with the "bombs" in the air, sacrificing themselves to prevent the weapons from reaching troop concentrations on the ground.
Their sacrifice bought precious seconds and saved dozens of soldiers, but it ca at the cost of so of the aerial superiority they couldn’t afford to lose to beat Victor.
And even so, the damage was enormous.
While they had managed to intercept so of the attacks, too many had reached their targets, spreading the golden infection through formations that had taken hours to organize.
What had been a manageable containnt problem was rapidly becoming a catastrophe that threatened to unravel their entire operational capacity.
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